Donald Trump says ‘REPEAL’ first — and all his supporters go, yes!

OPINION:

President Donald Trump won the White House with two major platforms: Secure the borders and repeal Obamacare.

So his most recent tweet is a most welcome read to Trump supporters’ eyes.

“Republicans should just REPEAL failing ObamaCare now & work on a new Healthcare Plan that will start from a clean slate,” he wrote. “Dems with join in!”

Exactly. Because if Dems fail to join in, they’ll enter the 2018 races with a crumbling Obamacare on their backs, having to answer to voters who want to know why their premiums have skyrocketed, or why their doctors of choice aren’t covered under their plans. Republicans will have to answer the same questions — only account for the reasons, too, why they failed to repeal after so many years of promising to repeal, and in the face of a clean leadership sweep of the House, Senate and White House.

So now, it’s a race to see which party wins the political capital on Obamacare, come 2018 election season.

Trump’s tweet shows he’s trying to honor campaign promises.

Republicans in the Senate, thankfully, are moving, albeit slowly, in the “full repeal first” direction as well — particularly after the crushing defeat of a version of a Mitch McConnell-backed reform bill that would’ve simply rubber-stamped the government control aspect of Obamacare.

As Sen. Jerry Moran wrote: “[I]f we leave the federal government in control of everyday healthcare decisions, it is more likely that our healthcare system will devolve into a single-payer system.”

Yep. True enough.

So McConnell’s sent out a new message.

“Regretfully, it is now apparent that the effort to repeal and immediately replace the failure of Obamacare will not be successful,” he said in a written statement. “So, in the coming days, the Senate will vote … [on] a repeal of Obamacare with a two-year delay to provide for a transition period to a patient-centered health care system that gives Americans access to quality, affordable care.”

Good. This is what Trump supporters wanted; this is what all those voters who gave Republicans majorities in the House and Senate during the last couple election cycles wanted.

McConnell may moan that a full and clean repeal won’t pass. But fact is, this is what conservative voters signed on to — this is what Republican politicos promised.

Republicans have the backing of the president on this.

So here’s a thought, going forward: Republicans wasted seven months dithering in the House and Senate about Obamacare repeal, watering it to various substitutes that never actually fulfilled voters’ wills or expectations. Maybe now they’ll take their jobs more seriously and press hard and fast for the repeal that was promised.

If they don’t, Democrats are standing at the ready, preparing their 2018 campaign ads of a Republican Party, red-faced, caught in the web of lies they created called Obamacare repeal.